


Bless my spear, sting my feet

by kolorowa_posypka



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, POV Achilles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 14:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10855668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kolorowa_posypka/pseuds/kolorowa_posypka
Summary: He was an old soul. His eyes were dark and deep like my mother’s, but the secret and love of his own was that no one would ever fear to jump into depths of his gaze; which was welcoming, stand fast and warm like Hephaestus’ smoldering fire.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> english is not my native language, I try tho

I was five. Standing among taller, older boys at the beginning of a race track, I was playing with my hair and kicking the sand out of boredom.

I was going to win this race. So what? It won’t be the first, nor the last. If it wasn’t that racing is my thing, one and whole with my body and spirit, I wouldn’t want to be here.

There was some time to spare until the competitors were to spring free through the sand, with me ahead, so I let my attention wander around. The easiest target was the bright, blindingly sunlit dias, and I found myself watching the host king. He was pointing at something next to him, spitting bitter words I didn’t care to catch. When he turned to someone on his other side, the boys around me started to bump at each other with excitement, because priest appeard and the race would begin any moment.

Then, something pulled my attention back to the dias. It annoyed me as just one of those insightful feelings I knew come sometimes and leave me nauseaus. But everything inside me went still when I saw who the king was pointing at before.

It was a boy around my age. He sit behing the counter, right in the first deeper shadow of a dias’ canopy.

No wonder I haven’t seen him earlier. Maybe it was the contrast with the white, almost specular drapes, maybe something else, but he was almost black in the shadow. With his large inpenetrable eyes, forehead and ears covered with thick black curls and only a little bit lighter skin, he reminded me of the southerners from far beyond Knosos or even some of their animal-headed gods.

Perfectly still, our eyes didn’t meet once, for his were stuck somewhere in the horizon behind me, dreaming things that were yet to come. He was like the full moon forced to rise during the day, solemnly hidden from sunbeams.

The way he carefully positioned and stilled his arms, showed that behind the counter he’s holding something on his lap. I knew it’s probably some ribbon or wreath dedicated for the winner. But it wasn’t just that, not for me. Not then. Suddenly I wanted to win whatever he was holding. Whatever he has to offer. All of it. I wanted to rest in the shadows he ruled, from sunburned wind that was starting to play on my hair. The host king moved on his chair.

For a brief moment light fell into boy’s eyes and I found myself shifting in the sand, as my feet began to sting with something there would never be a name for.


	2. Chapter 2

Spartans tend to worship Eros in between their trainings and it never struck me how appropriate and total it was.

Not until those days we set our war routine.

First, the teeth-exposing pyrrhic dance on worn sandal soles, in the dusty air and highest sun. Next, My Patroclus there for me, already in want, soul and body, as my personal sublimation of the passionate roar of our times.

In the dark of the tent, I was finding him here and there, in our almost innocent chuckles and mock-surprises. It was returning home at a waning of a day. Burying myself in his shadow to find all the lost breath, injured humanity, stained godness.

Diving deep, I was surrending to his kathartic arms – cool, soothing, all-healing. They weren’t always like that, though. Few years later, as I asked him to be careful, his extended palm got burned into my memory as almost feverish.

***

He was an old soul. His eyes were dark and deep like my mother’s, but the secret and love of his own was that no one would ever fear to jump into depths of his gaze; which was welcoming, stand fast and warm like Hephaestus’ smoldering fire.

I’ve always knew what I want of life and what I am to forge of myself. And he was the love I would never be stupid enough to hope for.

He was an old soul and his greatest virtue was understanding. He understood so deeply and beyond any known logic, I coudn’t fit him anywhere. Too intangible for a statue, too firm for a patron ghost of mine.

I saw him and I knew that’s it, the in-between similar to mine, the very world I wished to dive in and never fully emerge back.


End file.
